The bestselling historian of The Silk Roads and The Earth Transformed talks Mongols, medieval misuses, and what Uzbek disco can teach us about civilisation.
What sound does history make?
For some, it’s the clatter of typewriters, the whisper of parchment, or the drudgery of exam hall silence. For Peter Frankopan—Oxford professor, bestselling historian, and unrepentant lover of Central Asian synth-pop—it’s deeper. Stranger. Seismic.
“A groan,” he says. “A tectonic, subterranean groan—not of collapse, but of friction, of wheels turning, or gears grinding.”
Frankopan doesn’t write history that sits quietly on the shelf. His books, The Silk Roads and The Earth Transformed, sweep across centuries and continents to challenge the idea that the past is a European, linear, and solely anthropocentric. Our conversation took place not on the cobbled streets but digitally, via email—a 21st-century route through ancient terrain. His answers? Rich, wry, and thunderous.
Let There Be Weather
In The Earth Transformed, Frankopan repositions nature from backdrop to protagonist in the drama of civilisation.
“It changed everything,” he writes. “For centuries, we’ve treated nature as not part of the story of history… Even when we do get going, you’ll be lucky to hear anything about the environment at all: Did it rain in Ancient Rome? How were forests protected (or not) during the Wars of the Roses?”
His deeper point is more radical: that our past is not only political, but planetary.
“Civilisations do not rise and fall in isolation,” he argues. “Causality… is not merely about kings and conquests—it’s about rainfall, crop failures, and parasitic infestations.”
Ignore that, and “you miss the heartbeat of history itself.”
The Default Setting of ‘Progress’
His previous blockbuster, The Silk Roads, shook the foundations of Eurocentric history, especially the stubborn idea that the modern world was invented in Florence, Cambridge, or Paris.
“That modernity was born in Europe…” or, “as if the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution, and the Industrial Age emerged in a vacuum,” he writes.
Instead, he credits centuries of global intellectual exchange—algebra, optics, paper, and even the compass—imported via Islamic, Chinese, and Indian thinkers.
“The belief that Europe is the default setting of ‘progress’ still permeates textbooks, museum labels, and ministerial speeches. It’s a distortion that dulls our understanding of how deeply interconnected the past really is.”
Rivers, Not Ladders
Frankopan also dismantles the feel-good myth of upward human progress.
“I used to think we could trace a clear arc through time, from darkness to light, superstition to science… But the archives show something more chaotic, more circular.”
“Civilisations don’t evolve like trees—they meander like rivers, sometimes disappearing underground before bursting forth again.”
It’s less comforting than the traditional story. But, he insists, more true.
The Empire Will Be Rebranded
Empires, he warns, are not relics. They’re templates.
“Empires rise, fall, and are reimagined under new names. But their logics—of extraction, hierarchy, expansion—are persistent.”
While nostalgia for the empire might fade, its patterns remain—whether in “trade agreements, satellite launches, or ‘mutual development’ initiatives.”
“It’s also back in full swing,” he adds, pointing to how countries like China, Russia, India, Turkey, and the US frame themselves as heirs of the glorious, world-shaping pasts.
Marco Polo Didn’t Discover Anything
When asked which historical figure is most misunderstood today, Frankopan doesn’t hesitate.
“Marco Polo. Too often cast as a lone adventurer who ‘discovered’ the East, rather than someone moving along routes already teeming with trade, culture, and sophisticated knowledge systems.”
He says the myth of the heroic European explorer still shapes who we think has knowledge and who is relegated from our observation.
Forgotten Centuries, Present Lessons
While most timelines obsess over 1066 or 1945, Frankopan highlights two other moments of massive global importance.
“The 13th century… a moment of extraordinary global exchange—of trade, disease, and ideas—when the world truly began to feel connected.”
Then there’s the 17th century: “Little Ice Age, wars, famines, and state collapses.” He says both are worth revisiting—especially because “we are tilting again.”
From Newsround to Crusades
His journey into history didn’t begin with dusty archives. It started with John Craven’s Newsround.
“It’s where I first heard about genocide in Cambodia; about revolution in Iran; about the PLO… acid rain… famine in Ethiopia.”
It taught him to think globally and critically. Later, discovering how the Crusades were taught differently in Ottoman versus British schools was a personal revelation. But it was the 1990 invasion of Iraq that showed him how history could be weaponised.
“Medieval history was recruited to justify military policy—terms like ‘clash of civilisations’ and ‘crusade’ re-emerged with force.”
“History became a tool of power, of identity, of fear. That’s when I saw how alive and dangerous it really is.”
The Footnote to End All Footnotes
When asked what single footnote from his research he’d sneak into the national curriculum, Frankopan didn’t reach for kings or conquests.
“That in the 10th century, Chinese officials were warning about deforestation, soil erosion, and climate instability due to human activity. A thousand years before the IPCC.”
“That tells you the Anthropocene didn’t begin yesterday. We just forgot how to listen.”
The Soundtrack of Civilisation
For someone who spans millennia with his scholarship, Frankopan is precise in his musical tastes.
“Brian Eno’s Music for Airports… not because it’s calming, but because it evokes movement, distance, and a kind of spatial ambiguity.”
Or, when in a more apocalyptic mood, Ryuichi Sakamoto’s async: “a meditation on impermanence, memory, and fragility.”
But history also dances.
“If I want to put a spur in my step, I’ll pop on some 90s bangers, some Radiohead, or my current favourite – Synthesizing the Silk Roads: Uzbek Disco, Tajik Folktronica, Uyghur Rock & Tatar Jazz from 1980s Soviet Central Asia (which was inspired by my book). Some absolute classics.”
Groaning Towards the Future
Peter Frankopan doesn’t ask us to memorise dates or admire dusty ruins. He asks us to listen to the groans, echoes, and rising hum of the past pressing against our present.
His work doesn’t offer tidy answers. It offers perspective: planetary, tangled, and urgent.
History, he says, isn’t dead. It’s groaning.
.